With Sleuthing and Satellite Images, Mr. Melvin Fills the Blanks on a Secretive Nation’s Map
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How to Deal With a Dictator
North Korea’s recent nuclear test is the regime’s latest act of dangerous defiance. This time around, a new, tougher response is needed.
North Korea’s Dollar Store
Office 39, North Korea’s billion-dollar crime syndicate, pays for Kim Jong Il’s missiles and cognac. Why did the Bush White House choose not to shut it down?
Hostages of the Hermit Kingdom
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists released last month after being imprisoned in North Korea, tell their story — and remind people of the story they wanted to cover.
I said, ‘What’s your — pardon me — your fucking plan, then, if you don’t like this?’” “‘We don’t like—’ I said, ‘Don’t tell me what you don’t like! Tell me how you’re going to stop the North Korean nuclear program.’ ‘But we wouldn’t do it this way—’ ‘Stop! What are you going to do?’ […]
“We all knew there was no hope for anything to get better in North Korea,’’ she told me. “Sometimes we’d say, ‘Hey, if we crossed the river we’d be in China, but there are too many soldiers.’ ’’ Song-hee also knew that, if she crossed the border, she could be picked up by the Chinese […]
Mental Floss Editors: Our Top Longreads of 2011
The editors of mental_floss magazine: Mangesh Hattikudur, Ethan Trex, Stephanie Meyers, and Jessanne Collins. They’re also on Twitter and Tumblr. *** “Deep Intellect,” Sy Montgomery (Orion Magazine) Is it weird to say we enjoyed this trek “inside the mind of an octopus” because it was so sensual? Who knew the octopus can taste with all of […]
[Fiction] A family of children escape starvation in North Korea: The day the siblings left to find their mother, snow devoured the northern mining town. Houses loomed like ghosts. The government’s face was everywhere: on the sides of a beached cart, above the lintel of the post office, on placards scattered throughout the surrounding mountains […]
Shin In Geun was born into Camp 14, a prison for political enemies of North Korea. His first memories were of executions, and he had come to hate the parents that gave birth to him knowing that their son would also remain a prisoner: The guards taught the children they were prisoners because of the […]
How Hilary Clinton carefully negotiated blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng’s freedom, and proved herself to be a tenacious Secretary of State. “By the time the American diplomats acknowledged what had happened and went back to cut a new deal for Chen, the Chinese were in no mood to talk. In the meantime, Clinton herself was […]
